Costa Concordia righted after massive salvage effort

From Barbie Latza Nadeau and Matt Smith, CNN

Updated 1509 GMT (2209 HKT) September 17, 2013

Photos: The Costa Concordia disaster44 photos

The Costa Concordia disaster – The refloated wreck of the Costa Concordia is towed to the Italian port of Genoa on Sunday, July 27, to be scrapped, ending the ship's final journey two and a half years after it capsized at a cost of 32 lives.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The Concordia is towed into the port of Genoa on July 27.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Tugboats tow the wreck of the Costa Concordia as it leaves Italy's Giglio Island on Wednesday, July 23.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A view from a porthole shows the wreck of the Costa Concordia as it's being towed on July 23. It'll take about two years to dismantle the massive cruise liner.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The Costa Concordia cruise ship sits in front of the harbor of Giglio Island after it was refloated using air tanks attached to its sides on Tuesday, July 22. Environmental concerns prompted the decision to undertake the expensive and difficult process of refloating the ship rather than taking it apart on site.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The ship's name appears above the water on Monday, July 21. The ship is expected to arrive in Genoa on Sunday, August 27.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Tugboats pull the Costa Concordia after the first stage of the refloating operation on Wednesday, July 16.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A small boat passes by the wreckage on Tuesday, July 15.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Water is expelled from the caissons hooked onto the Costa Concordia on Monday, July 14. The ship will be towed north to the port in Genoa, Italy.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Thirty-two people died when the 114,000-ton vessel, seen here on July 14, ran aground off Giglio in January 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – In December 2013, crews managed to rotate the ship into an upright position.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – To float the ship, seen here on Thursday, June 26, crews attached 30 steel tanks to fill with compressed air.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Ship captain Francesco Schettino, left, returned to the Concordia in February for the first time since he ran the liner aground. He is on trial on charges of manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster and abandoning ship with passengers still on board. He denies wrongdoing.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Experts inspect the ship's damage in January. They boarded the vessel to collect new evidence, focusing on the ship's bridge and the onboard elevators.

The Costa Concordia disaster – The ship had been lying on its side for 20 months off the island of Giglio. Here, members of the U.S. company Titan Salvage and the Italian marine contractor Micoperi pass by the wreckage.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Damage to the right side of the ship is apparent in September.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Using a vast system of steel cables and pulleys, maritime engineers work on Monday, September 16, to hoist the ship's massive hull off the reef where it capsized.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The project to upright the Costa Concordia continues on September 16. The nearly $800 million effort reportedly is the largest maritime salvage operation ever.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A water line marks the former level of the stricken Costa Concordia as the salvaging operation continues on September 16. The procedure, known as parbuckling, has never been carried out on a vessel as large as Costa Concordia before.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Members of Titan and Micoperi work at the wreck site early on September 16.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Technicians work to salvage the half-submerged ship in July 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Giant hollow boxes have been attached to the side of the ship, seen here in May 2013. Attempts to refloat the ship will be aided by the compartments.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A commemorative plaque honoring the victims of the cruise disaster is unveiled in Giglio on January 14, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Survivors, grieving relatives and locals release lanterns into the sky in Giglio after a minute of silence on January 13, 2013, marking the one-year anniversary of the shipwreck. The 32 lanterns -- one for each of the victims -- were released at 9:45 p.m. local time, the moment of impact.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A man holds an Italian flag on his balcony overlooking the port of Giglio on January 13, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A man works in front of the shipwreck on January 12, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A couple walks along the port of Giglio at night on January 12, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A man sits in his boat in front of the half-submerged cruise ship on January 8, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Cranes and floating decks surrounding the ship light up the dusk sky on January 9, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Workers stand on the edge of the ship on January 8, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A crew passes by the hulking remains on January 7, 2013.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – People enjoy a day in the sun with a view of the cruise liner on July 1, 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Military rescue workers approach the cruise liner on January 22, 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Members of the Italian coast guard conduct a search-and-rescue mission on January 21, 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – Rescue operations to search for missing people resumed on January 20, 2012, after being suspended for a third time as conditions caused the vessel to shift on the rocks.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The Costa Serena, the sister ship of the wrecked Costa Concordia, passes by on January 18, 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – A bird flies overhead the Costa Concordia on January 18, 2012. Rescue operations were suspended as the ship slowly sank farther into the sea.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The ship was sailing a few hundred meters off the rocky Tuscan coastline.

The Costa Concordia disaster – Rescuers search the waters near the stricken ship on January 16, 2012.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The Concordia, pictured on January 15, 2012, was on a Mediterranean cruise from Rome when it hit rocks off the coast of Giglio.

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The Costa Concordia disaster – The ship starts keeling over early on January 14, 2012. Evacuation efforts started promptly but were made "extremely difficult" by the position of the listing ship, officials said.

Story highlights

It's a massive undertaking that had never been done with such a large ship

Two bodies are believed to be in or near the wreckage

Engineers succeeded Tuesday in righting the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Italian island of Giglio, where it had capsized when it ran aground in January 2012, killing dozens of people.

"She is standing upright better than anyone thought she would be," said Nick Sloane, the senior salvage master, about the vessel three football fields in length. "When she started moving, she moved slowly but surely. There was no twisting at all. It was exactly as the plan said it would be."

In an unprecedented and painstaking process that involved massive pulleys, cables and steel tanks, the 500-person salvage crew from 26 countries rolled the 114,000-ton vessel off the rocks on which it had rested since it ran aground.

"It was a perfect operation, I would say," said Franco Porcellacchia, the head of the technical team for the cruise line Costa Crochiere, owned by American firm Carnival Cruises.

The effort began at 9 a.m. Monday. By midnight, despite delays caused by thunderstorms and the need to tighten a slack cable, the ship had been hauled off the rocks and upward about 25 degrees. That was far enough for the salvage crew to start drawing water into massive steel boxes attached to the exposed side of the hull and then use the weight of that water to finish rolling the hulk onto a steel platform built off the sea floor.

Four hours later, the wrecked ship was resting on the platform, said Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's Civil Protection Authority. Once the ship was righted, a slashing, diagonal line could be seen separating the white paint of the exposed hull from the brownish muck that had collected on its starboard side.

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There appeared to be no sign of leaks, Gabrielli told reporters -- a promising sign, as the wrecked liner is full of spoiled food and chemicals in material such as paint and lubricants.

"The sides of the ship will need major work and repair, but today we have really taken a clear step to allow the ship to be taken away," Gabrielli said.

But first, authorities will temporarily take back possession of the site to look for the bodies of two crew members still missing, Sloane said.

Once the salvage crew regains possession of the ship, they will find much work remains, Gabrielli said. A robotic submarine equipped with surveillance cameras will survey the damaged side of the ship and create models needed in planning for the next phase of operations -- the attachment of more buoyancy chambers called sponsons to the starboard side.

Once those are installed, water will be pumped out of the sponsons to refloat the vessel. Organizers expect the ship won't be towed away for dismantling until the summer of 2014.

"We will have a lot of things in the next few days to understand what needs to done to bring this venture to a conclusion," Porcellacchia said.

"We are not at the end of the operation, but this is a very important achievement," Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli said.

No sign of lost victims' remains

The Costa Concordia ran aground off Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 of the 4,200 people on board. The remains of Russel Rebello of India and Maria Grazia Trecarichi of Sicily have not been recovered.

Rebello, 33, was a cruise waiter who was last seen helping passengers off the ship. Trecarichi was on the cruise to celebrate her 50th birthday with her 17-year-old daughter, who survived.

The nearly $800 million effort is the largest maritime salvage operation ever, according to Costa Crochiere and its partners, Florida-based Titan Salvage and the Italian marine contractor Micoperi. Reporters and sightseers lined the port and the hillsides during the operation.

A complex process

Monday's process, known as parbuckling, was the first step in the plan to remove and scrap the 952-foot ship. The Concordia was rotated onto giant platforms 30 meters (about 98 feet) below the water level, which leaves parts of the ship that have been dry for months submerged and filled with water.

No ship this large or heavy had ever been parbuckled before. Normally, crews would have blown up the ship or taken it apart on site -- a cheaper route than what's being done now.

But officials say that wasn't an option with the Costa Concordia, because the ship is filled with noxious substances and because the two bodies are believed to be either trapped beneath or inside the ship.

Hundreds of people and dozens of companies have collaborated on the preparations, but the parbuckling came down to 12 people, including salvage master Sloane and specialized technicians, who guided the operation from inside a prefabricated control room set up on a tower on a barge in front of the ship.

In preparation for Monday, towers were anchored onto the rocky shore and fitted with computer-operated pulley-like wheels.

When the rotation began, the wheels guided thick cables and chains that pulled the middle third of the ship from under its belly toward Giglio. At the same time, more chains and cables attached to the sponsons welded onto the ship's port side pulled the ship from the top toward the open sea.

If things had gone wrong, the ship could have broken apart, causing the toxic contents of the ship to leak.

They include thousands of liters of lubricants, paints, insecticides, glue and paint thinners as well as 10 tanks of oxygen and 3,929 liters of carbon dioxide.

Refrigerators filled with milk, cheese, eggs and vegetables have been closed tight since the disaster.

And the freezers that remain intact contain the rotting remnants of what were once 1,268 kilograms of chicken breasts, 8,200 kilograms of beef, 2,460 kilograms of cheese and 6,850 liters of ice cream.

The salvage operators set up two rings of oil booms equipped with sponges and skirts that extend into the water to catch any escaping debris.

Francesco Schettino, the captain who guided the ship off course, faces charges of manslaughter, causing a maritime disaster and abandoning ship with passengers still on board. His trial resumes September 23 in Grosseto.